Strange as it sounds now, the proposal was by no means absurd at the time. Boston’s borders had been growing for almost three centuries — who knew when it would stop? Then as now, greater Boston operated in many ways as one big metropolis. Why should this single economic engine be divided up into dozens of separate municipalities? Kiley’s proposal was part of a wave of expansionist thinking that spanned more than 30 years. Though its most radical ideas failed, it was deeply influential in how the region is structured today.
As farming villages became bedroom communities, the new class of commuters came to expect services like street lights, running water, sewers, streetcars, and paved roads. But it made no economic sense for each of them to sort out these public utilities independently. Starting around the turn of the century, politicians and economic leaders offered a succession of ideas for unifying the region. In 1896, the state Legislature considered a highly detailed proposal to create a new county, to be called the County of Boston. It would include the city and its suburbs and, it was hoped, allow centralized planning without sacrificing too much of towns’ and cities’ independence.
In 1910, the high-profile “Real Boston” campaign, led by Filene’s co-owner Edward Filene, pushed a similar scheme — but instead of a county, that campaign’s leaders envisioned an advisory board that could bring the region’s development agenda under one roof. As late as 1919, a Boston mayor, Andrew Peters, was calling for annexation. He dreamed of a continuous belt of coastal factories stretching from Lynn to Quincy, connected by a single city street network. Only “cumbrous and complicated” small-town red tape stood in the way of his vision. “We can hardly fling a bridge across one of our three rivers without framing legislation,” he wrote.
